The pale green dusk thickened into night. In the sky stars lit up and on the shore great pyres burned. The new moon rose from the sea, red and immensely heavy. But we did not find peace, for our breasts were filled with a restless yearning. My companions began to fight amongst themselves for the first time since we set off. None of them, as yet, drew his sword.
Some time before midnight I made my decision and told my comrades of my plans to return to the mountain. At that same moment I forbade any of them to follow in my steps. I was the king and my word was the law. The men grumbled in response, but none defied me. I set off and took my sword with me but left my heavy shield at our camp.
Once on the path, out of sight of the others, I began to run up the mountainside, for my yearning was great. The moon shone red and a fire burned in my heart, the like of which I had never felt before, hindering my ascent and making me gasp for breath. Walking past unknown trees I picked their fruit and ate them; they burned my throat, but this to me was sweet. Strange shadows danced before my eyes, but I was not afraid, for I was consumed with a new strength, making me run and my muscles swell with renewed power.
In the moonlight the green of the temple towers and the walls acquired a deep red tinge. At the foot of the pillar lay the woman’s dead body, contorted, but now her face had turned towards the moon, her head twisting unnaturally over her shoulder, her eyes wide open. But the sanctum was bright red from the light of the moon.
I stopped in the purple shadow of the pillars. The statue was as it had been. Her body was caught in the grip of passion and on her left ankle was a ghostly pale stripe where the bangle had been. I caressed her body, her breasts and the curve of her hips, and their frigidity so blinded me with rage that I wished I could die. And I, king of the greatest and most feared land, knelt before the goddess of this vanquished tribe and prayed to her and hit my head against the stone floor begging her to appear to me and to surrender to me the wonder of her green, shimmering body. For I loved her and my blood burned for her.
From the door I heard a clatter, the faint sound of metal against stone. And when I turned around I saw one of my comrades, the one I loved dearest of all; my blood brother, for once he had saved my life in the land of the Gauls. His whole body trembled as he looked upon the naked goddess, bathed in dark red moonlight. I saw his clenched fists and my bile rose. I raised my voice and threatened him with my wrath for disobeying my orders. And with that I commanded him to return from whence he had come.
Yet he did not heed me or my words, he barely heard my voice, but approached the goddess and touched her naked shoulder. I drew my sword and so the blood of my closest friend flowed into a black puddle on the floor and I saw the fire in his upturned eyes die away. Yet I felt no remorse, for I could see that the goddess had turned her head and was smiling at me and that on her face was an expression I could not fathom.
At this I tore at my clothes, I bared her my breast, brown and strong. And I knelt on the cold floor and vowed to forsake my kin and the place of my birth and everything that once I had cherished, if only she would love me.
And at this the goddess stepped down from her pedestal. Soon I sensed that her green skin was soft and warm and fragrant. Her long, oval eyes looked at me, searing through me, drowning my thoughts in their green fire. As I felt her wonder against my body I whispered hot, passionate words into her ear. And as I clasped her to my breast I heard the last drops of blood slowly trickle from the body of my closest friend and fall to the stone floor.
When finally I lay back on the cold floor, a last throb surging in my veins, she had returned to her pedestal and raised her hands towards the stars. I understood that she was cursing me and my companions and my tribe and everything I held dear. Her eyes glowed with a hatred of which I had never seen the like. But nothing could stir me; I fell into a sweet, languid sleep which was not sleep at all, but a deathly slumber.
The sun was shining high above when I awoke to the sound of three of my companions entering the temple in search of me. They were pale and sad and my mind was filled with dark misgivings. They were shocked at the sight of my friend’s body on the floor, but no one uttered a word as I commanded them to bear forth the body.
My men reported that the previous night, after I had left, a quarrel and a fight had broken out amongst the men. The discord had soon turned to bloodshed. The men all believed the others had betrayed them, and eventually the smallest move of the dice had resulted in a brawl. The slaves had then begun arguing over wine and women. As a result barely half of the slaves and only a handful of others remained alive, and these three companions implored me to leave the island without delay, for here strange and malevolent forces reigned.
I looked at the goddess and the men looked at her too. I understood that her arms were extended in a curse and that there was wicked rejoicing in the expression upon her face, but my companions could not see any change in her. In their eyes fear and desire merged into a wild glow.
At that point I let it be known that I wished to take this green effigy as a token of our victory. The men took fright, but when I said that all I wanted was the statue and that they could share between themselves all our treasures, they became happy again. But still they were not content.
I ordered them to carry the statue down to the ship and each tried in turn, but not one of them could move it. Then I took hold of it myself and I felt it rise into my arms. I carried it just as the Viking warriors had once carried home their stolen brides. My companions were amazed at my strength, though I did not feel the weight of the statue in the slightest. And on its ankle there was a pale stripe and upon my wrist the heavy jewelled bangle.
As we marched through the devastated city, the statue of the green goddess in my arms, the women tore at their clothes and rubbed earth into their hair. But when they saw the goddess’ bangle upon my arm, their eyes were filled with horror and astonishment and they knelt on the ground and bowed down before me.
I carried the effigy on to the ship and stood it upon the foredeck. We buried our dead in a mass grave and ordered the slaves to assemble a cairn at the site. The bodies of the slaves we threw into the sea. All in all there were only a dozen of us left and a score of slaves.
We loaded our treasures on to the ship and it heaved beneath of the weight of gold and precious stones. In addition we took water, grain and fruit. But we did not rejoice.
Night had already fallen, but we did not wish to remain on the island a moment longer. We raised the sails and, guided by the stars, we slowly began rowing towards the sunrise. Behind us the Island of the Setting Sun disappeared into the dark night, but still the shadow of its towers was cast upon us and we felt the weight of that shadow.
The sun rose many times and set many times, the moon died and was reborn. A virulent disease erupted amongst the slaves, and they died one after the other, their bodies covered in terrible boils. The sea was menacing and there was no favourable wind. And my companions were filled with dread, afraid that we would never find our way across these unknown waters.
The nights were pitch-dark and every night the green goddess would wake from her stony sleep and I would clasp her to my chest upon the ship’s rolling deck. Her love was destructive, but its wonder was great.
One day my companions came to me and said that we would never again see the land of our birth unless I threw the green goddess into the sea; the statue which brought us only misery and destruction. But I did not agree to this. And when they attempted to take her by force I fought to protect her. Thus I slew my remaining companions and commanded the slaves to cast their bodies into the sea. I had not been wounded, but now I was alone.
The disease continued to spread amongst the slaves, though I myself killed and threw into the sea every one of them at the first sight of a boil upon their skin. They perished one after the other. By the next full moon I was the only living creature aboard the ship and there was no one to attend to the sails.
I sailed through these unknown waters a
nd allowed the ship to drift with the wind. A frozen loneliness surrounded me turning my thoughts wild and senseless. But every night I embraced the green goddess, though our embrace was filled with hatred. Her love sucked all the life and sense from me, I could feel it. And often I thought of the misery she had brought me. I no longer had friends nor a birthplace nor a belief in the benevolence of the gods. Yet despite this, as evening fell, I would throw myself into her arms regardless.
Finally I resolved to bring it to an end. So intensely did I loathe her naked, green beauty, in whose name so much noble blood had been shed, that one day I suddenly cast her overboard into the gleaming, green water. I watched her sink, her long, oval eyes staring unblinkingly back at me through the water. But once she had disappeared into the infinite depths below I regretted my deed and cried and with my sword cut wounds into my flesh and rubbed them with stinging ash.
A storm broke and the waters churned like a witch’s cauldron. I raised every sail, fastened the rudder and roped myself to the mast. The ship raced forwards, the squalling waters carrying it through the darkness in an unknown direction, and I wished it had sunk so that I could have perished with it. Eventually I heard the bulwarks break, the bottom creak and the yards snap, and at that moment I knew nothing and cared for nothing.
When once again I felt the warmth of the sun I was in what remained of the ship, amidst the cleft boards and the broken, splintered masts. At the bow there no longer stood the proud carving of the dragon. I was taken aboard a passing Hispanic ship, upon which the men wore bright tunics and carried long, curved swords, and I became their slave. I did not resist, for I no longer cared what happened to me beneath this sun.
At the orders of many different masters I was forced to travel the breadth of the southern shores and I became acquainted with their knowledge and wisdom. Yet nothing could satisfy my mind. My body was crippled with longing. Only once I was an old and tired man was I rescued by my tribesmen the Vikings and was able return to the land where I was born to be king. But my tribe had been defeated and had disappeared. Our enemies had devastated the valley where I was born, now nothing but plague and famine raged there. I know that it is I who have brought this curse upon my people, but I care not, for I am an old and tired man.
Father Anselmus, who at my behest has written this account on thick parchment, has told me tales of the fair Jesus Christ who was gentle and good. On bright days he has brought peace to my mind. But all that peace I would give, if but once I could feel against my skin the wonder of the green goddess’ naked body and in remembrance of those days of glory once again whisper passionate words into her ear.
Forty-eight times has spring blossomed since then, forty-eight times has the sea been born again, but never has my longing faultered nor my yearning died. Every night I kiss the diamond bangle upon my arm and long for the land of eternal shadows, so that in a burning boat I may sail forth on my final journey across the blue and dazzling sea in search of her, whose long, oval eyes longingly call to me, shining through the gleaming water from the infinite depths below.
The Great Yellow Storm
Bo Carpelan
Bo Carpelan (born 1926) is a Finland-Swedish novelist, poet and translator. In terms of form and content his work displays a continuous desire for experimentation, breaking boundaries and a linguistic richness. Themes common to Carpelan’s work are the nature of memory and dream. Both his poetry and his prose have been translated into a dozen or so languages. In 1977 he was awarded the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize and in 1993 his novel Urwind (also available in English under the same title) was awarded the Finlandia Prize for Literature. The short story here is from the collection Jag minns att jag drömde (‘I Remember That I Dreamt’, 1979).
I remember dreaming about the great storm that one October evening, over forty years ago, shook our old school house near Havsparken. My dream is full of churning skies and mournful, anguished cries, booming echoes and strange occurrences, a witch’s brew still bubbling and steaming in remembrance of the day of the great yellow clouds.
Our mathematics’ teacher – a small, sinewy woman who looked as if she had swallowed a question mark and had always wondered where the dot had gone, and who therefore instructed us in a low voice and with crest-fallen eyes as if we did not exist, yet whose black little eyes saw everything that went on in the classroom and who would be in front of you like a weasel if you did not obey her – was standing writing out the seven times table on the blackboard when the classroom was filled with a strange light. We looked up towards the window: it seemed as if the whole school had suddenly been transformed into a railway station. The building trembled and shook, a whistling noise seared through the thick, cold stone walls, swathes of smoky clouds raced past the high windows and shunted our classroom forwards as if we were sitting in an aeroplane. Our teacher stopped writing and raised her dark, gaunt head. Without a word she walked up to the window and stood looking out at the driving clouds.
From out in the corridor there came shrill cries and the sound of doors slamming. Our desks were faintly trembling and, as if at a given signal, we all rushed towards the windows, climbed up into the deep bay windows to follow the wind’s onslaught. It had a deep, dark voice and another, higher and more shrill, and these two voices were woven together like rope lashing the trunks of the old linden trees, tearing the final leaves from their branches, leaving the park resembling a collection of black brooms, scattering dust, bent backwards like bows under the weight of the enormous boulders rolling in from the sea.
In your seats! came the sharp voice of our teacher, but still we clung to the windows. The driving skies had disappeared, outside a thundering darkness fell and the six white lamps on the ceiling lit up only to go out once again. In your seats! she shouted and we reluctantly made our way back to our desks. Write! came the voice from the corridor. The lamps suddenly lit up again, glaring at full power, and the door was flung open. We raced towards it and were sucked out into the dark corridor and began to barge our way towards the exit.
All of a sudden there came a great boom, drowning out the sound of smashing glass, the murmur of a thousand voices from the great yellow wind. Through the windows in the stairwell we watched as, with a screech, the school’s gleaming corrugated roof was wrenched free of its rafters and flew out towards the sea like a billowing sheet. On its way it sliced the tops off a row of linden trees and disappeared with a roar over the observatory, high upon the wavering hill which rose out of the quaking park. And no sooner had the roof disappeared than it was followed by a cloud of report cards and essays, collected in the school attic for a hundred years. Like feathers from an enormous cushion; that is what this swirl of white paper looked like as it rose above the school and was blown out to sea and swept inland at an incredible speed. How strange nature can be! It turned out that these essays – “My Summer Cottage”, “Sunrise”, “What The Sea Means To Me”, “My Favourite Author”, “Flowers Indoors And Out” – and others like them were blown out to sea and have been read fondly by the light of an oil lamp on autumn nights by several generations of fishermen. For a long time, my mother said, they carefully dried out the soaked blue jotters suddenly spiralling down over small outcrops and islands, and tried to decipher their beautiful calligraphic script, while hunters and farmers in the north could read about “The Hero King Karl XII”, “Europe’s Influence on American Culture”, “Mussolini: A Statesman” and “Electricity As A Power Source”.
Once the cloud of report cards and essays – no one gave them a second thought afterwards, they simply disappeared and were gone, perhaps they were used for starting fires – had been seen rising above our shamelessly naked school, the headmaster – a tall, thin man who could contort himself into the most remarkable shapes – dashed up the stairs to the attic and the entire school loyally followed behind him. The school’s old caretaker tried in vain to stop us: we streamed past him and charged up to the attic, which had suddenly fallen silent. The school had been ca
ught in the eye of the storm and a terrifying silence fell over what remained of the school archives. But along the walls there still stood cabinet upon cabinet filled with the pride of the whole school: a collection of stuffed birds donated by the previous headmaster. Climbing on to a table the headmaster shouted to us to carry the birds to safety. The storm will be overhead again soon! he shouted, his white hair standing on end like in an altar picture I had once seen in church. The man in that picture had been holding a sword, but the headmaster was merely brandishing his pointer.
How right he was! No sooner had we opened the door to the cabinet containing small birds, wild ducks and titmice, swans and razorbills, storks and ibises, gulls and eagles, crows and long-eared owls, than the wind gusted once again. Across the clear sky a crimson glow shone towards us, and with a howl a booming wind whirled through the giant room and swept the birds from our hands.
And what birds! It was as if all these years of silence collecting dust they had simply been waiting for the signal to break free! With a unison cry like the sound of a gigantic thousand-stringed harp they flew along the familiar walls, rose shouting and twittering, quacking and chirping, yelling and shrieking, piping and cooing into the air and disappeared from sight. With deafening wings, flapping wings, swooshing wings, with blinking eyes and necks outstretched, with legs stretching backwards and their talons extended they whistled in circles above the headmaster, who reached out a long, pale, powerless arm towards them, before they disappeared like the leaves of a tree, up and away, out into the depths of the sky, and their cries gradually died away in waves of strange echoes, whilst we managed to crawl against the heavy, muted gales and move back down the staircase.
The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy Page 6